Every week I’m going to start doing a dump of links and other retro gaming related things that I thought were interesting this last week.
Screenshot from the fheroes2 project
The folks at Time Extension did an interview with the people behind the fheroes2 project. Fheroes2 is an open source multiplatform project that reproduces the original game but makes improvements like support for high-resolutions, improved AI, numerous fixes and UI improvements. It just got a big update two days ago too. Fgeroes2 requires the original files, which are available on GOG.
Mattias Gustavsson made a massive post on their Itch.io blog about Drakborgen, a board game from 1985. The post is filled with lots of pictures of the game and now I really want to try it.
I posted about it earlier but Myst Online got big update for its 20th anniversary and it seems like the biggest part, an addition to the main area, was added this last Saturday and the game had an in-game celebration for it. I’m happy the game is still around and think it’s worth checking out. If you’d like to try it out, it’s available for free.
Finally, this update is more for people that live in the state of Michigan but it looks like Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum got a little bit of an extension before it may possibly get knocked down. I’m hoping that the amount of pressure that everyone is putting on the city will result in some sort of protection for the arcade or at least buy them enough time to move somewhere else, since the planned demolition would be to just make additional parking lot space for a grocery store. Unfortunately it looks like Pinball Pete’s in Ann Arbor is facing demolition and people are trying to figure out ways to keep that place alive too. It’s a rough time for arcades in my area.
The DOS game Father World has received an English patch on Itch.io. The game was originally released in South Korea in 1994 but doesn’t seem to have been officially released anywhere outside of the country since then. It is an action adventure platformer game similar to games like Another World, and is more focused on telling a story and exploration than action setpieces. If you want to see what the game is like, pixel_turkey streamed the game on her Twitch channel.
This week was bananas so this is a rushed collection of stuff in indie games that I really liked. This week it’s mostly focused on adventure games, since that’s a genre I’m really into in general, but also just a lot of stuff happened this week.
Screenshot from The Will of Arthur Flabbington
The Will of Arthur Flabbington is now out! This is a point-and-click adventure that originally started as a jam game for the AdventureX jam. It got a Kickstarter funded to help turn it into a full game with voice acting and from the little I played of it, seems really neat!
Lake got some Christmas DLC. I really enjoyed playing Lake two years ago and found it was exactly what I needed during a very stressful time in my life. I know a Christmas themed DLC is not going to be for everyone but I’m looking forward to revisiting the game and I think I even have some nostalgia for holiday themed games and DLC just because of the time I spent playing stuff like Jazz Jackrabbit Holiday Hare and Xmas Lemmings.
This one is much more local, but the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University are doing a showcase of their student games on December 6 at 7pm in Ann Arbor. There’s always an incredible batch of games that come from both schools every semester so if you’re local, consider checking it out!
Excuse Me Sir is a demo for an upcoming horror game made by a bunch of cool folks. I really liked the 90s adventure game vibes it has and it’s really short and not frustrating at all, which was surprising since it’s very heavy on ways to die.
Inspector Waffles Early Days is a game on Kickstarter looking for funding to develop a physical version of a Game Boy game. I never played the original game, a point-and-click adventure for the PC, but I heard it’s very good and liked the Playdate game the developer made, which also got a physical release. I just think it’s fun seeing the Game Boy have a revival because of GB Studio and Analogue.
Midnight Margo is a new adventure game by some of the folks that worked on Whispers of a Machine, a point-and-click adventure that I really enjoyed. From the reactions I saw, the art style seems to be very divisive but I think it’s really neat. The game also seems to have some RPG elements and I think that will be a nice way to make the game stand out from others in the genre.
Screenshot from Midnight Margo
A demo was just released for Heir of the Dog. I believe it was originally a jam game or freeware? Anyway, I really liked the dev’s previous game Lucy Dreaming and it’s nice to see that we’ll be getting more games from them.
The Blathering Keep looks like a really fun free game by Danielle Riendeau. I haven’t played it yet but the art is really cute. I like the concept of a dungeon crawler where you’re attacked by corporate jargon, and I really like her writing elsewhere so I bet it’s a very funny game.
Finally, earlier this week it was announced that Uppercut Crit will be going on hiatus. I was really sad to hear this because I thought it was a great place for games crit and lots of great indie game coverage. It sounds like the podcast Indie Mixtape will still be going on so be sure to follow that and consider supporting other outlets of independent games crit like No Escape, Kritiqal, Into the Spine, and all the other cool places I have listed in my Cool Site Zone.
A really neat thing I wanted to do a shout out to is all the recipe collections on Itch.io. Since it’s a site focused on games but supports other things, I think it’s cool that people are using the Books section to upload their recipe zines. I made a collection here that you can check out to find some of them. There’s a wide variety of themes, one is paired with a tabletop rpg and others are inspired by video games. You can find more by checking out some of the tags on Itch like recipes, food, and cooking.
It’s not on Itch but I also wanted to mention Alpha Chrome Yayo’s album Let’s Get Cookin’, which also features a cookbook as part of the purchase on Bandcamp. It’s a good album and I just like seeing people finding unique ways of distributing recipes.
The 1994 DOS game Pizza Connection/Pizza Tycoon also came with a recipe book of pizza recipes and it’s also part of the download if you get it on GOG. More games should come with recipes. Even the ones that have nothing to do with food.
A nice little feature I’ve discovered this year in ScummVM is the ability to replace the soundtracks of some games with other versions. The ScummVM website mentions it but I didn’t know of it until I saw that George Sanger, also known as The Fat Man, started selling soundtracks of his games on Bandcamp that also included files for ScummVM that allow you to listen to a higher quality version of the soundtrack of games like Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo while you play. It’s been really nice listening to these while revisiting the games with my kids. The soundtracks you can do this with are currently:
Cover of the Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon soundtrack
But I would also encourage you to check out the other albums on his Bandcamp page because there’s a lot of great stuff on there.
Tom McGurk has also rereleased his soundtrack for Spy Fox 2, which comes with files for ScummVM.
Another place where you can find mods for game soundtracks is through the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project by James Woodcock. The project is focused on recreating midi soundtracks of games at a higher audio quality level and isn’t trying to do an “improved” soundtrack or make any drastic changes, and the site is very open about how they are a big fan of the original soundtracks and are just doing it as a fun personal project. Also from reading this post about The Gene Machine, it sounds like he gets permission before releasing an enhanced soundtrack. I think they’re really neat and will have to use them when I replay some of these games. You can check out a video doing a comparison of the original and new Beneath a Steel Sky soundtracks here:
Currently the games supported by the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project are:
It sounds like there’s an enhanced soundtrack being made for Simon the Sorcerer 2 right now, so be sure to follow the project for future updates.
The ScummVM website also links to ways to replace the Loom soundtrack with your preferred version of Swan Lake and building a talkie version of the original Monkey Island 1 and 2 using the voice acting from the special editions. I just think it’s really nice that these things exist when we revisit some of our favorite games.
Update: A lot of people replied on social media of other sites they liked so I have added a list of them at the end.
This morning I went looking for a shareware game I remembered playing 20 years ago and discovered that not only was the game now free, the same website I downloaded the game from two decades ago was still up. This led to me thinking about other old shareware game developer sites I knew of, and discovering some others that were new to me as well.
Spheres of Chaos
This was the game that kicked off my whole dig into old shareware developer sites this morning. Spheres of Chaos is an arcade game like Asteroids, where you fly around shooting at various objects and they break into smaller bits, while dodging other space ships trying to shoot at you. The game was originally released in 1992 for the Acorn Archimedes and then re-released in 1998 for the PC, where it has received a few updates since then. The visuals remind me a lot of Llamasoft’s games, with a psychedelic aesthetic with bright colors coming from every movement and explosion. I originally discovered this game almost 20 years ago, on the Idle Thumbs website before it launched a podcast. The review does a much better job explaining why you should play it than I could. At the time, I did not have a credit card or the money to pay for the small amount the developer was charging. Fast forward to this morning when I suddenly remembered playing this game and dug around the site to find the name of the game. I was pleasantly surprised to see the website was still up, looking the exact same as it did when I first downloaded the demo, and the game was now available for free. Best of all, the game still holds up! It was a blast flying around, blowing everything up, and the screen filling up with various colors. Highly recommended if you’re a Llamasoft fan.
Redwood Games
This led me to discovering some shareware game developers that still have websites going, even if they aren’t actively developing new games. Redwood Games was created about 1990 by Karen Crowther and the studio is most famous for the games Math Rescue and Word Rescue, which were published by Apogee Software. Both games are still available on Steam today. The site also features downloads of other games they worked on like Talking ABC’s and the shareware version of Pickle Wars.
Gray Design Associates
Screenshot taken from the Gray Design Associates website
Gray Design Associates is the name of the developer owned by David Gray, most famously known for The Hugo Trilogy of adventure games, which started with the 1990 game Hugo’s House of Horrors. While GOG does sell the Windows version of the games running in ScummVM, David’s website sells both versions of the trilogy in the bundle if you want to own the DOS versions as well. It’s also the only place where you can legally buy Nitemare 3-D, the FPS spinoff of the Hugo games released in 1995. Since then, David has been focused on creating jigsaw puzzle games and still makes them to this day.
SophSoft
SophSoft is a developer that started in 1982 and is still going today! As someone that is interested in the history of Michigan game development, it’s cool seeing someone that has been making games for so long in Lansing, Michigan. Their portfolio also shows games they helped with, such as Legacy of the Ancients and The Legend of Blacksilver by another local game developer, Quest Software.
Adept Software
Adept Software is a software developer that is most famous for the shareware game Jetpack. The developer started in 1996 and is still working on things today. The Classic Games section of their site is a delight, resembling a 90’s website, and features their classic games for free.
Game Crafters
Game Crafters was a studio that developed one game, The Adventures of Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian in 1992. That hasn’t stopped the studio from having a website with updates as recently as 2012. The site has downloads of the game for various platforms and you can also read news posts about an attempt to make a sequel in the early 00’s.
MVP Software
MVP Software was a publisher in Grand Rapids, Michigan that started in 1985 and kept going all the way to 2014. While the site itself isn’t anything exciting to look at, I think it’s great that it’s still up and offering free downloads of all the games they’re legally allowed to offer such as Pickle Wars, the game I mentioned earlier by Redwood Games.
If you enjoyed reading about these studios and visiting their sites, I highly recommend the book Shareware Heroes. The book goes into detail about the shareware scene, including some of the developers mentioned here. If there’s an older site belonging to a game developer that you’re a fan of, or you’re a game developer with a site that’s been around for a long time, feel free to leave it in the comments!
Sites Recommended by Others!
I didn’t expect people on social media to have so many other shareware game dev sites that they like so I have made a list of them here!
3D Realms – The legacy version of their site. (Suggested by Richard Moss) Bluemoon Interactive – Developer of classic DOS games like Skyroads. The history section of the site has links to download full versions of their games. (Suggested by Pulsar) Cap’n Magneto – Shareware game for the Mac. (Richard Moss) Carr Software – Developer of shareware games, all available in a bundle. (Hard Drive Noises) Crazy Bytes – Recommended by LunarLoony Everett Kaser Software – Developer of Sherlock and other games. A great post by Ian Michael here about why he is a fan of the developer. Goodsol – Developer of a Solitaire application that is updated every year (Richard Moss) Hamumu Games – Developer of shareware games that has recently rereleased them on Steam. (Andy Hat) JunkGames – Recommended by LunarLoony KPixGames – Developer of PathPix and other shareware games (ROTOPE) Lena Games – Developer of Solitaire shareware and other games (LunarLoony) Louise Hope – A World Builder dev that includes games you can play in your browser. (Mike Piontek) Ray Dunakin – World Builder dev, including a modern Mac remake of one game (Mike Piontek) Sean O’Connor – Suggested by Greg. “Sean O’Connor made a rather addicting Empire clone called “Mother of All Battles” for Windows 3.0 that is still getting some updates and being sold today!” Semicolon – Modern ports of his old software, including Mac games (Richard Moss) Spiderweb Software – Actively making rpgs since the 90’s (Andy Hat) Stick Software – Developer of various applications and games for the Mac (Richard Moss) Storm Impact – Developer of MacSki and other Mac games. The downloads come in an emulator friendly format. (Mike Piontek) Wendell Hicken – Creator of Scorched Earth (kilowatt) Winograd – Developer of Mac and Windows games (Richard Moss) Zugg Software – Creator of MUD clients (Richard Moss)
Even if the games industry has largely moved on to making games for other platforms, there’s still tons of games being made for DOS every year. I’ve previously made a post about the DOS Game Jam, which also includes some recommendations, but someone from the DOS Game Jam discord has put together this really good list of native DOS games that were submitted to the jams.
A screenshot from DZZEE
There’s also lots of DOS games outside of game jams on Itch such as The Aching, Hibernated 1, and many others with the DOS and msdos tags on their product pages. Some of the games with these tags are just (very good) games inspired by classic DOS games, but there’s plenty that run natively on DOS as well. If you’d like to find more DOS games, including ones outside of Itch, this site seems to have a good list of some of the games out there.
If you want to talk about DOS game development, find out about upcoming DOS game jams, just want to talk about DOS games in a welcoming and inclusive environment, consider joining the DOS Shareware Zone discord.
This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out Beneath a Steel Sky, a point-and-click adventure game created by Revolution Software and released in 1994. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to help people get into the game and a little background on it.
Why Should I Play It?
Even though it was released a few decades ago, it still holds up very well! It was an early game by Revolution Software, who would go on to create the Broken Sword series. The cyberpunk mystery was co-designed and features art by Dave Gibbons, most famously known as the artist for Watchmen, giving the game a distinct style. The game also has a charming mix of comedy and earnestness. The game became a cult hit and eventually led to a sequel, Beyond a Steel Sky, in 2021.
How Do I Get Started?
It’s very easy to start playing the game. The game was made freeware in 2003 and is available on the ScummVM website. If you haven’t used ScummVM and want everything configured for you, it’s all set up in a free download on GOG.
This next part is completely optional. The ScummVM Music Enhancement Project is a site containing alternate/enhanced versions of soundtracks for games that run in ScummVM, They’re all available for free and have instructions for how to replace the music. If you would like to see how the two soundtracks compare, you can check out this video here and see what you like more.
Tips for Playing Beneath a Steel Sky
For the most part, Beneath a Steel Sky is easy to get into if you’ve played other point-and-click adventures but here’s a couple things to keep in mind when playing.
Read the Comic Prequel Packaged with the game was a comic that sets up the game and explains the backstory. For the most part this comic also appears in the game’s intro but it’s still worth reading to see an extended version with more art by Dave Gibbons. You can read the comic here.
Save Often You will want to save regularly and rotate between a few save files. There are a few points in the game where you can die and the game does not automatically restore you to a safe point when it happens. It’s not in a ton of places but it’s still a good idea to save just in case. It’s also a good idea to rotate between a few save files. There aren’t really any softlocks except technically at the end where forgetting an item in a room may lead to a dead end scenario in the next room, but it’s nothing to be concerned about as long as you have a couple save files you are actively switching between.
Using Hints is Ok Compared to a lot of adventure games from the era, Beneath a Steel Sky isn’t on the more difficult end of the genre. But everyone finds different puzzles to be difficult and if being stuck is ruining your enjoyment of the game, feel free to look up a hint. I think the page for the game on UHS Hints does a good job of helping with puzzles without giving away too much.
A year ago I wrote a couple of articles (here and here) recommending some indie adventure games for Halloween, and since it is the Halloween season again, or at least it is according to a lot of enthusiastic people, I thought I would do a few more recommendations.
The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow
The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is a folk horror point-and-click adventure game developed by Cloak and Dagger Games and published by Wadjet Eye Games. I’m a big fan of both studios and even mentioned Football Game by Cloak and Dagger Games in a previous recommendation article. This may be their best game so far. The game features some fantastic art and sound. I especially love the use of light and color in the artwork. The game is very approachable for people newer to point-and-click adventures, with a more simplistic interface and never feeling too frustrating.
The Aching
I’ve mentioned this game on the blog before but it’s a very nice game and I’d love to see more people check it out. The Aching is a parser graphic adventure inspired by classic Sierra adventure games from the 80’s. I enjoyed the game’s horror setting and how it feels like a game from the 80’s without the frustrating softlocks you frequently run into in those games. I don’t mind death in adventure games but this game has a unique take on it where you must do things that would typically cause player death to proceed. I also think it’s cool that the game is built to run on DOS, although it has a DOSBox wrapper so it runs on Windows without any issues.
ParaMonsters and the Haunted Escape Room
If you’re looking for something a little less scary this Halloween season, check out ParaMonsters and the Haunted Escape Room. It’s a very short (30 to 60 minutes) and cute adventure game where you help a group of monsters investigate an escape room that may be haunted. It’s been in one or two of the big bundles on Itch too so you may already own it.
No Rest for the Wicked
No Rest for the Wicked is a short, comedy game where you are a vampire’s servant and must help him make the spell that will bring humanity to an end. The free game features voice acting, nice pixel art, and well-designed puzzles. But don’t take my word for it, it won the 2023 AdventureJam game jam, where teams have 14 days to develop an adventure game.
Played Inca, an adventure game/rail shooter by Coktel Vision and released in 1992 about Incas and conquistadors fighting in space. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is! You journey through time and space to grab some important looking orbs to become El Dorado and bring the rebirth the Inca empire, all while fighting conquistadors flying boats in space. The game has you alternating through these shooting segments (there’s also some on foot) with traditional point-and-click adventure game parts. Since this is a French DOS game, none of it is really that well designed but it’s all fascinating and certainly a lot more playable than other DOS games that hop around between different genres, even with the difficulty spikes. I’ll definitely play Inca 2 at some point because the weird combination of it all and the FMV is very interesting to me.
I’ve been playing Goblins 3 this month for Adventure Game Club, which is by the same developer, so it’s fun looking at the credits and seeing that the people involved with that goofy game also worked on this right before that game. I don’t know if I could recommend it because it certainly is a clunky game and it becomes too difficult towards the end, but it’s easy to get running in DOS Box if you want to try it and it has passwords and stuff you can do to make the action segments a little bit easier. I would definitely recommend watching the intro which starts off normal enough and then suddenly shifts into “what the hell am I watching?”
I love French DOS games.
Inca is not available for sale but is updated to work on modern OS on the abandonware site The Collection Chamber along with Inca 2.
